IMPORT & EXPORT

In a sign of how bad the port congestion problem grew on the West Coast this January, East Coast ports ended up handling 45 percent of the cargo containertraffic that entered the United States, up from 36 percent during the same month last year.

Even though a labor dispute has been tentatively resolved, port officials in the Los Angeles area admit it will take at least three months to deal with the traffic jam of goods that has plagued the watery transportation centers since October.

Hammering out a tentative contract with longshore workers took nine months of negotiations. Now importers are hoping it doesn’t take as long to clear thebacklog of merchandising floating on the water outside the country’s largest ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach.

After a federal mediator was called in earlier this year to speed things along, West Coast longshore workers and their employers said they have resolved the sticky issue of how the chassis fleet is maintained and by whom.

The Port of Los Angeles reported that in 2014, cargo-container volumes were up 6 percent over the previous year. Total volumes reached 8.34 million 20-foot containers, which is the third busiest year for the port.

The worst Los Angeles/Long Beach port congestion problem in a decade still has cargo stacked high on the docks. Goods continue to take two to three weeks to get off out of the ports and onto trucks and rail cars.

The U.S. Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service said it plans to send in Scot Beckenbaugh, a skilled mediator and the service’s deputy director, to get West Coast longshore workers and their employers back to the bargaining table.

As 2014 draws to a close, the editors of California Apparel News take a look back at the year’s significant news from key industry sectors such as retail, trade shows and international trade agreements. We also take a look at the burgeoning interest in made-in-America manufacturing and some of the most-read stories of the year. Plus, we remember some California industry notables in our in memoriam section.